Right. Sorry for the interruption. I ran out of Wednesday and had to wrap that up pretty abruptly. If I were smarter I’d be writing Friday’s post right now and setting it to publish in the morning, but no, here I am squeezing today’s post in before midnight. Let’s see, where were we?

Twitter can be fun for hearing from your favorite author or movie critic or whatever, but I find it even more exciting to use it to just chat with people who share my interests, dreams and vision.

In the last couple of weeks on twitter, I have:

exchanged haiku with a homeschooling mother of 7 in England. (@mamacrow)

considered starting a musical collaboration with a poet in Seattle. (@hsofia)

received travel tips and encouragement from an unschooling dad who is backpacking the world (currently Bali) with his son, and I told him about how my passport application was denied. (@1dad1kid)

exchanged morning (for me) pleasantries with a full time storyteller in Israel, which led to folktale research advice (@limorshiponi)

discovered and greeted and received encouragement from a family that has traveled the world by bicycle (@familyonbikes).

received an invitation from my friends The Hollands (@the_hollands)

learned about the Waldorf alternative educational model from a local friend I haven’t seen in a while (@barefootdoula)

connected with the naturalist and author of What the Robin Knows, a book that’s inspired me in the last year.(@jonyoungauthor)

There’s an overwhelming amount of communication pouring through the twittertubes, but I’ve found it’s quite possible to filter out the noise find my tribe. Next time I’ll write more about the tools and ideas I’ve found to do that.

The other day, the blogathon had a writing prompt: What are your favorite apps? I had something else I wanted to write that day but it got me thinking. My favorite “app” has got to be twitter itself. I’ve been an on-again-off-again twitter user for a while now and the on-again periods have led to some really fascinating connections in my life. Maybe you’re on the fence about whether you want to use twitter or you just aren’t sure why it would be interesting. Let me tell you what I’ve enjoyed.

First, of course, are the witty famous people. When I started using twitter, Roger Ebert and Neil Gaiman regularly pointed me towards interesting articles or oddities, or they would share some short, beautiful turn of phrase they’d encountered. I miss Roger Ebert for the everyday poetry that he would share.

If that were all twitter was I would still have enjoyed it… but probably wouldn’t have stuck around. I’d like to tell you about the friends that I’ve made around the world but I let my day get away from me. I’ll continue this thought tomorrow.